Legislators reviving redistricting proposals

Sacramento Bee, The (CA)

February 17, 2006

Voters overwhelmingly rejected a recipe for redistricting reform during last year's special election, but they may get another bite at the way California draws its political boundaries this year.

A Senate bill that would take political mapmaking out of the hands of legislators and place it under the control of an independent commission is headed for debate in Sacramento next month.

In addition, Assembly leaders say they are writing a bipartisan election reform package on campaign finance, term limits and redistricting.

And if lawmakers fail to act, Ted Costa, author of last year's failed initiative, Proposition 77, expects to start gathering signatures next month on a modified measure. He swapped a controversial retired judges' panel for a citizen commission and nixed a middecade shift.

Any change in the redistricting process requires a constitutional amendment and a vote of the people.

Meanwhile, UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies has unveiled an exhaustive redistricting study that analyzed more than 50 scenarios and concluded that reform could produce an average of 15 potentially competitive Assembly seats and 13 out of 53 potentially competitive congressional districts.

Today, California has no competitive congressional districts and just five of its 80 Assembly seats are considered winnable by either party.

The potential increase in competitive seats is not insignificant, said institute director and political scientist Bruce Cain during a forum Thursday to talk about the study. "But you have to be careful about predicting the use of redistricting as a tool to increase competitiveness. There are many factors involved in competitiveness, such as incumbency, money and the candidates."

Researchers defined competitiveness as a district where the Democratic registration advantage did not exceed 10 percentage points, or 3 percentage points for Republicans. The range is larger for Democrats because Republicans are more loyal and vote in greater percentages.

The institute found that, during the 1990s, seats within those registration ranges had the highest likelihood to change parties.

In 2001, state lawmakers openly struck a deal designed to protect their own seats, adding fuel to the perennial push to reform the way the state draws its lines.

Critics say lawmakers have an inherent conflict when it comes to drawing their own districts. Many also argue high concentrations of Republicans and Democrats in safe seats has produced a polarized Legislature that favors party ideologues over moderates.

But despite repeated demands for reform, the complex nature of mapmaking and worries about control of the process has led voters to reject five measures since 1980.

Reform proponents remain undeterred, however.

"We believe the public wants reform, but they want the right reform," said California Common Cause policy advocate Theis Finlev.

Common Cause, along with a coalition of groups including the League of Women Voters and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is lobbying lawmakers for a legislative compromise.

They have loosely endorsed SCA3, a bill authored by Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach , that would create a five-member commission to draw new congressional, legislative and state Board of Equalization boundaries.

Retired judges would select a pool of 25 candidates. Assembly and Senate leaders would pick from the pool four members who will subsequently choose a fifth who is not a registered with any party already represented.

The commission would release draft maps to the public, and lawmakers could make recommendations. But the panel would retain authority to adopt the final districts. Costa's initiative, in contrast, requires the commission to go back to the voters for ratification.

Lowenthal's bill has already met resistance from Assembly leaders who say that its commission lacks true political independence.

As described in the bill, sitting politicians would select the panel. And while the rules would exclude from the panel anyone who has served in public office for the prior three years, that would not stop the appointment of highly politicized ex-lawmakers such as Willie Brown.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez "is working with (GOP Assembly leader from Bakersfield ) Kevin McCarthy to try and figure out how to create a truly independent commission with qualified members," said spokesman Steve Maviglio.

During Thursday's forum, Cain suggested that lawmakers stress transparency and broad participation over commission composition. An average voter plucked from a civilian job to serve on such a panel will be lobbied, he said.

But if mapmaking is conducted in public meetings and groups and individuals are allowed to submit their own plans for consideration, the scrutiny will help keep the process honest, he said.

"You can't seal the process from politics completely, so the most important thing is transparency," he said.

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Lisa Vorderbrueggen covers politics. Reach her at 925-945-4773 or lvorderbrueggen@cctimes.com .

Read the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies' redistricting study, "Competition and Redistricting in California : Lessons for Reform," at http://igs.berkeley.edu/redistricting_research/ .